From: Isaac Gouy <igouy@...>
Date: 2006-08-12T03:30:10+09:00
Subject: Re: Been there, done that - language shootout


Peter Hickman wrote:
> Isaac Gouy wrote:
> > Did you think others would be surprised?
> > You seemed to think they were overlooking the "the degree of speed up"
> > - why would you think that?
> >
> >
>
> Because when people state that performance is their priority and are
> told that C will give them the best performance they start to change
> their story.

I don't know what you mean by they start to change their story.

> I realise that C is harder to program in than any scripting
> language but the stated requirement was performance so anything less is,
> well, less. Perhaps the problem is that people don't realise just how
> much of a boost C can give you and therefore see the effort involved
> being out of proportion to the expected results, this comes down to not
> knowing what performance boost you can get.

Make a different assumption - assume that people do realize just how
much faster C is at moving bytes, can you find another explanation?

Look at your own webpage, it talks about comparing apples to apples and
yet Kristof Bastiaensen's Ruby program uses a completely different
algorithm. Would you have thought of Kristof's algorithm if you were
coding in C?

We have to ask 2 questions
1) How do I find a fast solution?
2) How do I make that solution fast?

In the first "For performance, write it in C" post you talked about
writing in Ruby or Perl or Python and then converting the program to C.
How much effort to you spend re-writing the Ruby or Perl or Python
exploring different algorithms and re-thinking the solution? How much
effort to find a fast solution before trying to make that solution
fast?